Gartner Says PC Industry Nearing Bottom

The PC industry may be nearing a reprieve from the double-digit declines in shipments it has suffered for much of the past year.

Gartner analyst Tracy Tsai predicts the global slide in personal-computer shipments will slow in the fourth quarter to a 3% year-on-year drop, compared with an 8.6% fall in the third quarter.

Bloomberg News

PC makers have been battling sluggish sales since tablet computers and mobile devices burst onto the scene and stole away consumers. Next year, however, world-wide shipments should be roughly flat compared with this year, Ms. Tsai said.

“The decline is at a much slower rate,” she said. “The global economy is stabilizing. Also, there will be more lower-cost, aggressively priced two-in-one (tablet with a keyboard) devices that are being launched in the second half of this year, which should help demand.”

The forecast will be a welcome one to an industry in upheaval. The latest victim of poor PC sales was Acer Inc. Chairman J.T. Wang, who resigned this month after the company posted a record loss.

Meanwhile, Dell Inc. has gone private as its founder Michael Dell tries to transform the company away from the scrutiny of the stock market.

Some PC makers with strong presences in the relatively stable commercial market have already returned to growth. Lenovo, Hewlett-Packard Co. and Dell all saw PC shipment increases in the third quarter from a year earlier, according to Gartner.

However, Acer and Asustek Computer Inc., which both rely heavily on the consumer PC market, have been hit the hardest, with shipment declines greater than 20% in the third quarter, according to the research firm.

As their traditional business declined, PC makers sought to branch out to manufacturing tablets and smartphones, with varying levels of success. Analysts say that although the PC industry has been shrinking, it will eventually level off, as there are still some functions that can’t be replaced by mobile devices.

There’s one caveat, however: Gartner’s forecast includes some hybrid devices that some may classify as tablets.

PC makers themselves are also changing their definitions of what a PC is – in the past year in Taiwan, Acer and Asustek have both changed their methods of classifying their devices to account for new products like tablets with removable keyboards.